First Impressions: Official Twitter for BlackBerry App

RIM’s official Twitter app for BlackBerry devices has been rumored to be coming for the last few weeks. It was released into beta yesterday and I’ve been test-driving it for the last 24 hours. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s not very good and here’s why:

• It’s incredibly slow to load and each tab (timeline, @s, DM, etc.) has to be refreshed individually

• There’s no way of knowing which tweets are new and which one’s are old

• The screen size for 99 percent of the BlackBerry devices limits visibility of the latest tweets to one or two

• You’re unable to view profile pics (small gripe)

• Does not support multiple accounts

• Previews for Twitpic/yFrog/etc are not available

• No video support

• There doesn’t appear to be a built-in URL shortener

• No option to pick which photo service to use

And here’s what I liked about it:

• BB shortcuts are enabled

• Photo uploading is painless

Perhaps TweetGenius and Seesmic have spoiled me rotten, but v1.0.0.228 of Twitter for BlackBerry is unimpressive and needs a bit of work before it’s released into the wild. We have one beta code to giveaway. Who wants it?